Our work is in the field of theoretical and
computational nanoscience. The main emphasis is on fundamental
properties of nanoscale structures, particularly low-dimensional
quantum systems, and their applications in novel nanodevices.

The physical systems that we are investigating
range from semiconductor nanostructures to organic
polymers and oligomers, and more recently, to some biomolecules
and their interface with inorganic structures in hybrid
devices. We focus on the interpretation of different types
of experiments, from linear and nonlinear optical spectroscopies
to transport experiments, and have focused especially on coherent
effects in regimes of ultra-high spatial and temporal resolution.

The methods that we use range from ab
initio density functional to semiempirical schemes to
understand processes on the atomic and molecular scale, and
to investigate the structural, electronic, transport and
optical properties of materials. We are also developing
and using novel theoretical approaches, based both on the
direct diagonalization of the exact hamiltonian, to account
for many-body interactions that become crucial when electrons
are strongly confined, and ab-initio density-matrix schemes,
to describe the excitonic effects without the need of semi-empirical
parameters.